Laser weapons are employed in the field of anti-missile defense, in which bundled laser beams are used to exert over a long distance (up to a few hundred kilometers), a thermal effect on the outer skin of the missile, so as to aerodynamically destabilize it. One example of such a weapon is the airborne laser weapon system Boeing YAL-1 of the U.S. Airforce.
Another possible application for such high energy radiating weapons is on battle fields, over a distance ranging from a few hundred meters up to a few kilometers. In this case the high energy radiating device exerts a thermal effect on weapons or ammunition that renders them ineffective for action.
For such a weapon, it is necessary to provide a tactical radiating device, which generates directed energy, and which is able to emit very high radiation in such a manner that upon arrival on a target, the radiation remain sufficiently high, to achieve the desired thermal effect on the target.
In order to successfully combat mortar grenades and similar targets with such a high energy laser weapon, it must be able to generate a focal point with an intensity exceeding 10 kW/cm2 on the target in a distance range of approximately one to three kilometers. In order to meet these requirements, the laser weapon needs a laser source having power of more than 100 kW. The development of high energy radiating devices (for example, high energy lasers) that are suited for such applications, is time consuming and expensive and entails considerable implementation risks.
For industrial applications (for example, laser beam welding), there already exist lasers that have a power of a few kW and almost diffraction limited beam quality (measured diffraction magnitude m2<1.1). Even though it appears that this power can actually be increased somewhat, such an amount of power is nowhere near adequate to satisfy the requirements of a tactical radiating device that can exert an effective energy impact on an object at a distance of several hundred meters or even several kilometers.